Trump Fires Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Jana Hoffman |Tuesday, March 13, 2018

President Trump is pushing out Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replacing him with CIA director Mike Pompeo

US President Donald Trump has fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after a series of public rifts over policy on North Korea, Russia and Iran, replacing his chief diplomat with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

The undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Steve Goldstein, says Tillerson "had every intention of staying" in the job because he felt he was making critical progress in national security.

Michael Flynn Resigned in February as Trump's national security adviser after disclosures that he had discussed US sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office and had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. We got along quite well but we disagreed on things.

Mr Trump tapped the CIA's deputy director, Gina Haspel, to replace Mr Pompeo at the intelligence agency. The now-former Cabinet member cut his trip to Africa short and returned to D.C. on Monday. The two also disagreed on whether the USA should remain part of the Iran deal brokered in 2015 to stop the country's development of nuclear weapons. Trump wrote in his tweet.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo speaks at the FDD National Security Summit in Washington, DC, U.S., October 19, 2017. As the president consistently poked the dictatorial bear through vague threats of military response and elementary school-level nicknames, Tillerson continued to float the importance of nuanced diplomatic efforts in order to avoid any escalation between the two nations as each flexed its nuclear muscles. "Tremendous energy, tremendous intellect", Trump said of Pompeo. She was the fourth person to hold the post since Trump became president. "I wish him all the best in his future endeavors".

The Washington Post reports that Trump asked Tillerson to step aside on Friday, March 9 moments after he had arrived in Kenya.

But over time, many lawmakers grew to appreciate Tillerson as a relatively steady hand in the chaotic Trump administration.

Last week, it looked like Mr Tillerson was unaware of the President's plan to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Paid $27.3 million a year ago, Tillerson has accumulated roughly $160 million in Exxon stock along with $149 million of unvested stock options, according a proxy statement the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tillerson's reponse broke with the White House line, which stopped short of blaming Russian Federation for the attack.

Speculation that Tillerson would be fired grew with those reports last fall, and the secretary of state never personally denied their accuracy. "I made that decision by myself".

"He dived into policy matters in a way that unnerved many professionals at the agency", the official added,"and morale was taking a blow that was spreading from the analytical side, where some people feared he was tailoring some PDBs (President's Daily Briefs intelligence assessments presented to the president) to tell Trump what he wanted to hear rather than what the intelligence assessments were". Top economic adviser Gary Cohn announced his resignation last week, not long after communications director Hope Hicks and staff secretary Rob Porter both departed near the start of Trump's second year in office.

The Federation Council's International Affairs Committee deputy chairman Vladimir Dzhabarov said that Pompeo "may have the chance to become a man who will stop our relations from dropping rock-bottom", the RBC business portal reported.

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